Hard Times - Yorkshire

"The UK will see a 46 per cent increase in funding received in the next four years, up to £8.5bn - 20 per cent of all the grants signed off under the programme.

News of the increased Yorkshire funding has been welcomed by the head of Science City York, Heather Niven, who said it was “fantastic news” for both universities and business communities in the region. Science City York has been supporting bioscience, creative, digital and IT businesses in Yorkshire for the last 16 years.

She said the EU funding was just one of a host of recent investments in science in the region.

Ms Niven said: “We are experiencing a science renaissance here in Yorkshire at the moment, with the announcement from government of £50m to locate two new national centres in North Yorkshire focussing on Innovation; the new Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock and a Centre for Crop Health and Protection.

“Other new spaces which are accelerating science in the region include Bradford’s Digital Health Enterprise Zone connecting business and healthcare, Biovale and the Bio-renewables Development Centre in York to name a few. Y

“Yorkshire and the Humber is becoming a real hotbed of science innovation and the Horizon 2020 funding will allow the region to further develop cutting edge research, leveraging additional focus and investment in areas such as agri-food, agri-tech and life sciences industries. This is great news for us and at Science City York we are delighted to see this additional boost for the regions’ science organisations.”

"Sirius Minerals has secured a supply deal with a Chinese fertiliser importer, underpinning the UK mining explorer’s plan to open a potash mine underneath a national park in Yorkshire.

On Thursday, Sirius announced a seven year “take or pay” deal with Huaken International that will run for seven years and involve the miner supplying up to 500,000 tonnes of polyhalite annually in the final year of that term."

"News of the deal caps a year in which Sirius won a lengthy battle to secure planning permission to build its York Potash project near Whitby, under the North York Moors.

Whether the project goes ahead now hinges on financing for the mine, which Sirius is looking to develop amid a deep mining downturn as the prices of commodities have tumbled. A detailed feasibility study with proposed construction costs is due to be announced by Sirius in January.

Sirius’ deal with Huaken is the latest in a string of supply deals that the Aim-quoted developer has announced as it has tried to build the investor case for the mine.

Demonstrating demand for its product is particularly important because polyhalite, the type of mineral to be produced in Yorkshire, has previously been little used globally compared with a known range of other potash products.

Sirius abandoned early plans to process the polyhalite into other forms and its business plan entails shipping it direct to customers — which it claims will bring “disruptive innovation” to the fertiliser market.

In announcing the deal with Huaken, Sirius said polyhalite would be used as a soil conditioner in China. “It can assist in helping countries like China restore agricultural productivity and maintain food security for future generations,” explained Chris Fraser, chief executive of Sirius.

Analysts at Liberum, one of Sirius’ corporate brokers, said the would-be miner had now signed binding offtake agreements for 3.6mt annually of its product, which is in line with the company’s target ahead of securing finance. Its largest offtake deal is for 1.5mt annually with an unnamed US agribusiness.

In the project’s proposed first phase, Sirius will aim to build a mine capable of supplying 10mt of polyhalite annually, which it says would give it about 3 per cent of the global potash market in 2020.

“As with Sirius’s other offtake agreements, pricing is based on a formula linked to polyhalite’s constituent nutrients. This is another major step forward for Sirius, further de-risking the project from a marketing perspective,” Liberum said.

Sirius’s project involves sinking 1,500 metre shafts into the mineral seam to be mined, then sending the product 36km through a tunnel 250 metres below the moors to a port at Teesside for export. It would be among the largest mining projects ever built in the UK, comparable to the development of the now defunct Selby coalfields in Yorkshire in the 1980s."

Meanwhile, Scarborough Radio "It's being reported that David Cameron will visit York tomorrow so it looks like the misery continues... " FB GAF "Come get ur eggs , 50p for 10 eggs , get ur money back if u hit him"

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9 Comments

Our high fells have lost the ability to hold water. At the top of Roeburndale fires in the 1940s or 50s changed the nature of the vegetation. (This is still happening with fires to burn the heather for grouse). The blanket bog with mosses and dwarf shrubs like heather, ling, bilberry and cranberry create a landscape with large mounds of moss has been lost and was replaced by grasses that the sheep find more palatable. This increases the grazing on these damaged areas. If an area erodes creating bare soil and usually an overhang that provides a sheltered area for sheep to lie. This further erodes these areas. The subsidies based on sheep numbers also caused additional overgrazing (these have now been removed). Once the clayey soil or peat gets waterlogged it starts to move and cause landslips. Another factor that causes problems is the permeability of the ground. This is nil with the extreme water logging or when the ground is overheated (With warm ground and cold rain, the water is similar to water dropping on a hot plate. It forms large droplets and runs off without any sinking in. Then in the rivers and streams the cold water don't mix well with the warm water and this makes the water flow with horizontal vortices across the river. These dig into the bank causing landslips.) Once the banks start to collapse they bring trees with them. These often get caught in narrow areas building up a dam. Once this dam breaks more water is released into the river creating more extreme flooding. The River Roeburn now can rise 1.5 metres in less than an hour. The next day it can be back to normal levels. This flash flooding washes out the stable habitat for the invertebrates that are the main food for the fish. So we also get reduced biodiversity. The only way to stop this happening is to reclothe our hills and fell tops with blanket bog and in some critical areas reforest with broadleaved trees. Once the water starts to slow then small leaky check dams in these high streams slow the flow. These is a new grant for reforesting these upland areas over 30 ha that was announced last week.
Lets get keep the water in the uplands where it can fill our aquifers and help to create a stable climate. Remember that the current flooding is caused by miss management over the last 60 years. Lets change this now.
Further down the rivers water management in the centre of the river can help to deepening the river profile by the careful placement of boulders in a v shape. This has been used by Otmar Grober in Austria. These funnel the water and create deeper channels away from the river banks. The waters energy is guided in and downwards, swirling sediment from the bottom and depositing it towards the river banks. No need for expensive dredging. Let the river do the work."

"Under EU rules, a country has 10 weeks from the first damage caused by a natural disaster to request aid.

A person close to Cameron said there were technical grounds to do with spending thresholds that determined when to apply for a grant. Britain had no desire to get into a war of words with Brussels on the matter, he said.

The solidarity fund - which Britain pays into via its contribution to the EU budget -- has disbursed 3.5 billion euros to 23 countries. It has helped fight forest fires in Portugal and Greece as well as the impact of earthquakes and drought."

"In the wake of the December floods, Prime Minister David Cameron has unveiled a new map of the UK.

“Rather than try to fight future flooding or repair damage, we thought it best to just embrace it and welcome them as a feature. Perhaps now we can have an even Greater Britain in 2016” the Prime Minster and Peppa Pig enthusiast told the press this afternoon.

The map has some striking new features. Most noticeably is the creation of a new stretch of sea crossing what was formally the North of England up to the Scottish border. This new body of water will be known as The Straits of Pish."

spose that will cheer the Frackfree lot up ... Nautilus, Franks blowing ... since when did the UK have 'weather bombs' .... feathers.

"Rio Tinto Group, the second-largest mining company, cut its capital expenditure forecast for 2016 as the producer strives to balance shareholder returns with investing in projects.

Capital spending will be about $5 billion in 2016, down from the company’s previous estimate of less than $6 billion, Rio said on Tuesday in a statement. Spending this year is seen at $5 billion, from a previous estimate of about $5.5 billion. It was about $8 billion in 2014, according to filings.

“As we approach the start of 2016, we are well positioned to continue to provide returns for our shareholders and invest in our business,” chief executive officer Sam Walsh said in the statement. Rio last month approved a $1.9 billion investment in a bauxite project in Australia."

"The Picadilly mine commenced production in November, 2014. A few months later, in late May, 2015, Potash Corp. still felt confident enough in the outlook for its key product to launch an $8.7-billion (U.S.) bid for K+S AG, a German potash producer.

It was forced to beat a retreat when fertilizer prices went into freefall. Potash Corp. killed its K+S offer in early October and began looking at ways to trim its potash glut. In addition to closing the Penobsquis mine, it suspended production at three of its Saskatchewan mines for three weeks."

"Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Oaks Colliery disaster in Barnsley which claimed 383 lives, including 89 boys. Chris Bond looks back at the worst pit tragedy in English history.

On the morning of December 12, 1866, nearly 400 miners trudged to work as usual to the Oaks Colliery at Hoyle Mill just outside Barnsley.

It was just another ordinary day of hard graft but by the end of it most of them would be dead.

The colliery was not only one of the biggest pits in South Yorkshire, it was among the biggest in the country with miners coming from as far afield as Ireland, Wales and London’s east end to come and work there.

In Victorian Britain coal was the main source of power, helping drive the Industrial Revolution and fuel our ever-expanding global empire.

But it was dark, dirty work. The coal was dug out from deep mines underground and in dimly-lit tunnels scores of miners hacked at the coal with picks and shovels...."